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Design Tools Monthly Report: Mac OS X on Intel processors

During Monday's opening keynote address at Apple's
Worldwide DeveloperConference (WWDC), Apple
CEO Steve Jobs announced the third major
transitionin Macintosh history: the transition
from PowerPC to Intel processors. Belowis our
summary of what is happening and what to expect.

This transition will occur over the next two years,
with Apple shipping thefirst Intel-powered
Macs in mid-2006, followed by higher-end Macs in the
12months after that. Jobs said that the reason
for the switch to Intelprocessors is that IBM,
the provider of PowerPC chips, has been unable
todeliver fast enough G5 PowerPC processors,
and has also been unable todeliver low-power
G5 processors that could be used in PowerBooks. You
mayremember that two years ago Jobs promised a
3-GHz G5 Power Mac, and wehaven't seen one
yet.

Fortunately for everyone, during the
past five years that Apple has beendeveloping
Mac OS X, they were also secretly developing a version of Mac
OSX that runs on Intel processors. In fact,
Jobs' entire keynote demonstrationwas
performed on Mac OS X running on a 3.6-GHz Pentium 4
processor.

Macintosh has had two previous
major transitions: from Motorola's
680x0processor to the PowerPC processor in
1994-1996, and from Mac OS 9 to Mac OSX in
2001-2003. Because of the talent of Apple's programmers, these
twotransitions went so smoothly that they are
considered unprecedentedsuccesses in the
computer industry. The upcoming transition from PowerPC
toIntel should be even smoother, due in part
to these two technologies:

1. Version 2.1
of Apple's Xcode programming environment2.
Rosetta

Xcode
2.1:Most applications for Mac OS X were
written using Apple's Xcode software,and the
new version of Xcode displays two checkboxes when compiling
anapplication: "PowerPC" and "Intel". By
checking both, a program is compiledinto a
"universal binary" that runs under Mac OS X on both PowerPC and
Intelprocessors.

Rosetta:Apple
says that Rosetta is an emulator that allows today's Mac OS X
softwareto run under Mac OS X on Intel
processors with little or no performance
hit.Unlike Classic, which must be launched as
a separate environment in order torun Mac OS 9
applications under Mac OS X, Rosetta exists within Mac OS
X,and runs when necessary without the user
necessarily being aware of it.

Because of
these two technologies, many developers believe that
thetransition to Intel processors will be even
easier than Apple's two previousmajor
transitions (PowerPC and Mac OS X). To prove the point, Apple
invitedWolfram Research, developers of
Mathematica software, to visit Apple'scampus
last Friday and asked them to bring along the source code
forMathematica. Mathematica is one of the most
complex, gigantic applicationson Mac OS X, and
Xcode 2.1 successfully recompiled it into the new
universalbinary format in two
hours.

Mathematica closely follows
Apple's programming guidelines, so
theconversion was quick and easy. Applications
that don't strictly followApple's programming
guidelines will take longer to adjust and recompile.
Butbetween this demonstration and the
existence of Rosetta, Apple believes thatthe
vast majority of Mac OS X applications will simply work on the
newarchitecture.

...Except
for Classic. No mention was made of this Mac OS 9
emulationenvironment, so we assume that
Classic will not be supported, and
thereforeyou may need to replace your Mac OS 9
applications to use an Intel-basedMac. (This
should be good news for both Quark's and Adobe's revenue
streamfrom
upgrades.)

Jobs was joined onstage by
Bruce Chizen, Adobe's CEO, and Roz Ho,
theGeneral Manager of Microsoft's Macintosh
Business Unit (MacBU), to assure usthat their
applications will be updated to run on the new
architecture.(Some folks are calling the new
architecture "MacTel", but we're going towait
for a better term.)

To assist developers
in updating their applications, Apple is offering
a$999 "Developer Transition Kit" that includes
a prototype 3.6GHz Pentium 4Power Mac and
preview versions of Apple's software. The kit will ship
onJune 20th. In addition, later this year
Intel plans to provide Mac versionsof its
developer tools: the Intel C/C++ Compiler for Apple, Intel
FortranCompiler for Apple, Intel Math Kernel
Libraries for Apple and IntelIntegrated
Performance Primitives for Apple.

(We
noticed that Steve Jobs always used "Mac" instead of "Macintosh"
andthat Intel's product names include "Apple"
instead of "Macintosh", so wewonder what the
future holds for the Macintosh
name.)

Besides the question of support
for Classic applications, a few otherquestions
also linger. What about new Apple hardware? None was
mentioned,other than a reference to an
Intel-based Mac in "mid-2006". Does that
meanyou should wait 12-18 months before buying
your next Mac? Jobs said that thefirst models
will be followed by higher-end models over the following
year.This implies that the first models will
be relatively low-end, although wethink the
first round may also include new iBooks and PowerBooks. Also,
willthe new Macs cost less because Intel's
processors cost less? Probably not,since we
think that Apple will want to control the configuration of
themotherboards to keep the build quality up
to Apple's design standards.

But for now
the question of processors doesn't really matter. Mac OS X
willcontinue to run on PowerPC processors for
the next several years, so whenthe cost of
upgrading becomes justified by enough of an increase in
yourproductivity and profitability, it makes
sense to buy an upgrade.